(Or if you just want the gift giving guide, you can get right to it here.)

I have a goofy relationship with holidays. On the surface it doesn’t seem weird at all. I love them! I adore Halloween and Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and Christmas (I grew up in a joint household although now there is some Mormon and some Buddhist action happening, but that’s for another day, another blog because this place is not about religion. Thank you very much.) Back to the point! I love them! But not really. They are always disappointing me. They are like that awesome aunt who has the coolest stuff and shares with you and looks at you when you talk and she seems magical and modern, except that one time when she bought you a fancy lace bra from Paris and you weren’t really old enough to wear a bra yet and it just felt… off. And you realized that her gifts were never really about you at all. Yikes and ewww. (No, this never happened to me, just a story.) So yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about holidays. The idea of them is spectacular but the delivery…not so much.

So I totally opted out of Thanksgiving this year, although I did have pie for breakfast because some traditions just need to be retained and reworked a little. Seems like many days would be better if they just started with pie! And I may opt out of Christmas as well. I’m not sure. But the one thing that I love…that I completely adore to the very tips of my toes is stockings! YAY for stockings. I may ask for a stocking for my birthday next year.

One year when I was five and I was just getting the hang of Christmas delivery methods, I asked Santa for a second stocking (secretly hoping it would also be filled to the brim). And it totally worked! When Santa delivers, he really delivers (at least in the stocking department.) The funny thing at my house, or at least now I know it’s funny because I haven’t really met anyone else who does it this way, is that we did the stockings last. After waking up and opening all the presents one at a time (Gah! Torture!) and after we felt overwhelmed and beyond satisfied, then someone would always remember, “The Stockings!“

“We still have the stockings!!!!!!!!!”

At the tip of the toe, there was always a beautiful Christmas tangerine of course. And there always will be. This year I’m hoping for one of these or these. Yes please.

The stocking was also filled with whole nuts. This was mostly a filler that got shoved to the side, but they HAD to be there nonetheless. Now that I have found these gorgeous red walnuts, I am completely pissed that my Christmas nuts weren’t ALWAYS red. Red is a Christmas color! What the hell? I better get them from now on. That’s all I’m saying about that.

So anyway, I find that people often shirk their duties on the stockings (run of the mill tangerines and boring brown walnuts just as a start) and I am on a quest to remedy this situation. So I put together a list of super awesome, Fruit Maven recommended stocking stuffers. I put them all in the Fruit Maven Amazon Store. How easy is that? I also added my notes about why this or that item is awesome and there is a special “What the hell is this?” section, which is small but disconcerting.

I would love to hear about your favorite traditions, or traditions you’ve flipped around and made your own, or your stocking stuffer ideas. Send it all my way, because like I said. I love holidays!

3 Comments

Jena
on November 24, 2011 at 10:18 pm

My parents got us all these big, knit stockings with our names & a Christmas decoration on them when we were babies, and every year we’d get up & open our presents (one before Mom & Dad got up, and we weren’t allowed to get them up before 8), and then we’d play with our new toys (or, as we got older, we’d go help make monkey bread for breakfast). When Grandma & Grandpa showed up, usually around 1, it was time to empty the stockings. Can’t recall ever getting fruit, though it seems like a grand idea now that I’ve become a bit of a foodie. (I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it when I was little, though, I admit.)

Jena
on November 24, 2011 at 10:23 pm

Oh, I should also say that my mom always insisted the stockings be filled with lighthearted, fun, quirky stuff. One year we got Sneak Peeks, which were little gizmos for extracting core samples from chocolates. You can probably imagine events that would lead up to us each getting one…